“Mapping the Planets” crosses disciplines

Astronomy may sound like an intimidating field, what with its heavy reliance on upper-level physics and mathematics. But according to Anne Collins Goodyear, former curator of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, planetary science can have a more accessible artistic dimension:

“The choice of colors in these pictures we get of outer space – that’s an arbitrary decision and an artistic one,” Goodyear said.

Based on her exhibit, artist Mary Edna Fraser agrees. “Mapping the Planets in Silk and Sound,” on display at the Flaten Art Museum through Oct. 20, is a multimedia exhibition that features silk batiks, or dyed clothes.

The exhibit includes works ranging from an image of a moonrise over the Pacific Ocean to a view of the Helix Nebula, a trillion-mile-long tunnel of glowing gases about 700 light-years away from Earth. Fraser is the top master dyer currently working in the U.S. and has worked in collaboration with geologist Orrin Pilkey on an exhibition about global warming that premiered at the Flaten Art Museum in 2008.

According to Dr. Jill Ewald, visiting professor of art at St. Olaf and former director of the Flaten Art Museum, the interaction between science and art could be beneficial to audiences.

Dr. Ted Maxwell, Senior Scientist Emeritus at the National Air and Space Museum and one of the chief collaborators on this exhibition, agreed about the inspiring possibilities of the project.

“I hope that people will read two or three of these labels [by the artworks] and go home and look up one thing on Google or Wikipedia,” he said.

Dr. Ewald, who made the decision to put on this exhibition while she was still director of the museum, said she chose to bring these artworks to the college campus because, “the college has been increasingly interested in interdisciplinary work. So has Flaten Art Museum. Such collaborations are important at St. Olaf and are important in order to solve world problems.”

There are benefits to the people who work in these collaborations, too. “[Artists] don’t necessarily have the same received ideas as scientists,” Ewald said. “Interdisciplinary work between art and science can help scientists to ‘break out of some of those received ideas in the field’ of science.”

While Fraser is apparently awed by the vastness of space, with her art she tries to bring a more appreciable, more human dimension to these images of space. For some of the works, like “Eye of God” (the aforementioned picture of the Helix Nebula) and “Dark Spot” (a view of the Great Dark Spot on Neptune, a centuries-old storm), Fraser chose to paint the images on patterned silk to help make the image more relatable and remind us that “It’s all one creation. It’s all one gift.”

Fraser said in her talk that for some of the stranger or less identifiable images, she “humanize[d] them by associating them with a human being.” For example, an asteroid that looked like a floating burka or mummy wrapping reminded her of her daughter’s struggle with bipolar disorder that was encasing her the same way the asteroid seemed to be encasing something.

In the notes posted by each artwork, Fraser draws creative connections between the image depicted to other cultural images, such as Van Gogh’s sunflowers and a spacecraft launch she once witnessed, as well as to more whimsical images such as “a ballerina’s lacy skirt viewed from a balcony seat” or “a meditative state.”

Fraser openly admitted the exhibit’s indebtedness to modern technology. She wrote that her work draws on NASA’s “many years of outer space exploration and recent advances in photography,” which make the works shown in this exhibition possible.

Dr. Maxwell said that the collaborators didn’t meet in person until they arrived at St. Olaf a few days before the exhibition opened.

“Communication had been mostly by email, with a couple of phone calls,” he said.

Mark Mercury, the composer whose sounds provide an auditory dimension to the exhibit, said that he is “lucky that I have those tools to make the sounds I want.” His music combines orchestral and electronic sounds to express the majesty and strangeness of space, as well as the universal and timeless inspiration that humanity draws from space. The musical dimension pulls together the entire exhibit, just as in return the visual and intellectual parts of the exhibit lend a richness and meaning to the music that it would not have on its own.

The exhibit is on display in the Flaten Art Museum in Dittmann Center. It will be open through Oct. 20, 2013 (closing from Oct. 12-15 for Fall Break).

Staff Profile

Andrew Wilder '15 is an English major with concentrations in Environmental Studies and Media Studies. Hailing from Santa Fe, NM, he has an affinity for the outdoors and chile in his blood. In addition... Read More »